Prairie dogs at center of legal debate

Gale Rose

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMSep 25, 2007 at 10:23 AM

Law saying Kansas county can poison prairie dogs on private property challenged over unknown effects of the poison

A group of prairie dogs in Logan County has a reprieve from a death sentence. Their fate hangs on a 100-year-old law that allows counties to go onto any property without the owner’s permission and exterminate any animal they deem a pest – and then charge the landowner.

That law and a Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks policy for issuing permits to use poison are both getting a lot of attention.

Poisoning recently went on for one weekend until farmers got the Shawnee County District Court to issue a restraining order to stop the use of Phostoxin, a fumigant used to kill prairie dogs, while the matter is considered.

Listed in the restraining order is Logan County and KDWP, because it is their responsibility to issue permission to use Phostoxin on wildlife, said Mike Mitchener, KDWP wildlife section chief.

Logan County has some 18,000 acres full of prairie dogs, said Logan County Commissioner Carl Ulrich, who, along with commissioners Douglas Mackley and Robert Scott, will challenge the restraining order.

The commissioners invoked the law from 1902 because the landowner was not controlling the prairie dogs, Ulrich said.

"They are just like any other pest -- they need to be controlled," Ulrich said. "It's a major problem. These people are letting these prairie dogs run on the neighbors grass, and they have to be controlled."

The law specifically gives the county the right to enter the property without the owner's permission and conduct the extermination, said KDWP Assistant Secretary of Operations Keith Sexson.

Larry Haverfield is one of several Logan County farmers who want to keep their prairie dogs. He wants the farmer, not the county commissioners, to have the right to decide to have prairie dogs or not.

He has about 7,000 acres full of prairie dogs, is a tenant where the poisoning took place and wants the Kansas Legislature to revisit the law to come up with better controls.

He wants to keep the prairie dogs to attract other species such as burrowing owls, snakes, turtles and other amphibians, reptiles and birds that live in prairie dog holes.

The use of Phostoxin is in question because it kills these other species when used.

Haverfield also wants to use the prairie dog town as an area to introduce the black-footed ferret, an endangered species that feeds on prairie dogs and lives in their burrows. If he has to eliminate the prairie dogs, the ferrets can't be introduced. The ferret project is unique because it is on private; ferrets are usually introduced on reservation land or federal land.

Audubon of Kansas says the issue is twofold: Landowners should have the right to maintain native wildlife if they choose to do so, and prairie dogs support a whole suite of other wildlife, said executive director Ron Klataske.

The Audubon sent some suggested policy changes for issuing poison permits to KDWP, and Sexson said they would review the policies.

The Logan County Commissioners notified the landowners that neighbors were complaining about prairie dogs crossing onto their property and needed to take care of the problem.

The commissioners determined the landowners were not eliminating the prairie dogs, so they invoked the law, hired an exterminator, Sexson said.

Haverfield, who submitted an extensive, detailed management plan to the Logan County commission in 2006, said he was working on the problem. He was doing some poisoning himself, permitted hunting and had established a tall grass perimeter around the area with an electric fence to keep cattle from eating the tall grass. Prairie dogs need short grass to see predators, so tall grass discourages them from expanding their territory.

The poisoning took place on stretch of land about 2.75 miles long and 100 yards wide that boarders land the prairie dogs are crossing. That equals about 100 acres, a much smaller amount than the first request for 10,000 acres. That was denied by KDWP, as was a second request for 3,000. Both requests were reviewed extensively.